


City of Stars

by venagrey



Series: Synesthesia [4]
Category: Uta no Prince-sama
Genre: And other things Haruka learns about, BRIEF and IMPLIED mention of underage sex, Being Gay in Japan™, Canon Compliant, Drama, F/F, Major ballroom dance themes, Or so he wishes, Psychological Drama, Record company dynamics, Reiji x Haruka in the epilogue, chakras, obligatory disclaimer, s&m themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:41:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28091829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venagrey/pseuds/venagrey
Summary: In agency-world, it was bad etiquette for employees of one agency to spy on the inner machinations of another. The rules of idol engagement didn’t end with Saotome Gakuen, after all.“You want me to go spy for you?”Ringo grinned. “I wouldneverask such a thing. Of course, some idols who have already been accepted will be there too—maybe you could go, just to see what you think?”Or, Haruka catches the eye of someone who will change her life. Synesthesia-verse.
Relationships: Kotobuki Reiji/Nanami Haruka, Original Female Character(s)/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Synesthesia [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1829167
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	1. Wonderland

**Author's Note:**

> This is nominally a work of fanfiction. It’s fanfiction because the main character is Haruka, who is owned by Broccoli. It’s nominal for two reasons: a) because it’s in Synesthesia-verse, and I’ve dived far deeper into Haruka’s character than the show or games ever have at this point, and b) because aside from a brief Ringo cameo at the beginning and again until the epilogue, every—single—character—in this story (besides Haruka) is one of my OCs.
> 
> I can almost guarantee that this story will make no sense without reading Synesthesia. Unlike the other prequels, which work as standalones, this one really doesn’t. I can also almost guarantee that no one in this fandom will care about this story as much as I do, because it’s an original piece in almost every respect. But that’s precisely why I wrote it. 
> 
> For the 1.5 of you who are interested: this story is basically the origin story of Divine Agency, the agency that poached Haruka from Shining at the end of Synesthesia. I wrote it because I felt like it, not because I thought anyone would care. The timeline in relation to the other stories in this verse is as follows: Blue Monday is a few months after the end of S4 of the anime, and An Education is about six months after Blue Monday, so about a year after the end of S4. This story is about a year and a half after An Education—2.5 years post-S4 and 1.5 years pre-Synesthesia. I know it’s a lot. This is how I do, though. 
> 
> Also, this verse is rapidly expanding out of my control. You’ll see why at the end of this. I have a problem.

The first time Haruka was exposed to tango was a day she would remember forever.

There was a person in the room who was dressed differently from everyone else. The person was tall, short black hair slicked back, dressed in a billowing white top tucked into black slacks, back turned to the audience. Haruka was nearly the last to arrive, coming right off a work engagement. She slipped her shoes off and adjusted her leggings, and was barely upright again when the door flew open.

Somewhere, in some language, there was a word for how the instructor entered the room. Haruka recognized her from the photo on the flier she’d been given at the studio. She was dressed in a black dress with a short, endlessly-flowing skirt, her lavender hair in a severe bun offset by a massive, glittering silver lily over one ear.

There was music playing. She prowled onto the floor. The rest of the class cleared room for her, but she was headed straight for the man by the speakers. At a certain beat, he turned to her.

The two approached each other in sync. Again, on a certain beat, a hand came against the instructor’s back that made her still. Her chest bowed slightly up around it. Their eyes bored into each other.

Then the music shifted. Without moving the hand on the instructor’s back, the man drove her forward and the instructor backpedaled, keeping the distance between them until the next measure. Then their legs hooked together behind the knee, swirling in and out from each other in footwork so complicated that it seemed a miracle they didn’t trip.

Haruka watched, stunned. At one point, the instructor shoved the man’s front, advancing forward only to be taken into a spin that ended with her arcing backward over his arm, tracing the leg holding them both up with one pointed toe—she spun up out of that, only to be chased back until the man lifted her by the waist into a figure four hold, the instructor’s leg bracing around his back as she swept a hand down his face. The instructor strode back, tracing her hands down her body, and stopped, the man taking her hand and spinning her backward until her back was flush with his chest. There was one final measure, then the man curled a hand around the instructor’s hip and whipped her around so they were facing, their lips inches apart. 

The music stopped. There was a beat, then the room burst into applause. The dancers stepped apart, the man making his way again toward the edge of the room.

Haruka picked out one voice among the resulting melee. 

“Minami! Michiko! That was _amazing!_ ”

Out of one corner of her eye, Haruka saw the instructor bow to the audience, then make her way to her dance partner.

“See you at home, darling,” The instructor said. It was low—lower than most of the room, now chattering animatedly with each other, would have heard. But Haruka was standing the closest to them. The instructor winked at the stranger, sweeping out of the room. Haruka looked at the instructor.

“Was that—?”

“My girlfriend,” The instructor answered ambiguously, smiling a bit. “And my partner.”

Haruka was left blinking at the side of the room.

The instructor walked into the circle. The class coalesced around her. Haruka turned and found her way in, determined not to be caught unawares again.

“Once upon a time, in a land on the far side of the world, there was a— _working girl._ ” At the pause, the instructor pivoted theatrically to face the other side of the circle. “During the time she lived, the wages she earned at night could determine whether she would eat the next day. She had to _sell_ her body to eat. To drink. To _live._ ”

“That sounds intense,” came a voice from the circle, a girl with long pink hair in a high ponytail. Minami turned to her.

“It is, Rika. When we’re learning tango, I want you to remember that hunger.”

And then the instructor paired them off. There were more women than men in the class, so some women went with other women. Haruka was paired with an athletic-looking man who looked to be 20 years older than her, familiar in the way of famous people whose names you can’t quite place. She deliberately didn’t think too hard about who he might be as the instructor showed them the hold for the first steps of the dance.

The class was a blur after that. There were steps to learn, rhythms to feel—even an exercise where the instructor had directed the feminine partners to close their eyes while the masculine partners tied strips of cloth around their eyes and walked them around the room. Whoever the man was, he was very patient with her. He was obviously more experienced, a fact which bled through every touch and correction.

And yet, in spite of that, Haruka had left the class feeling abuzz with the novelty of it all. By the time she felt her partner’s hands drop from her sides, she saw that she was nearly the last to leave. She blinked against the light as she untied the cloth, returning it to a box at the side of the room, following the cues of the last remaining students on the way out.

As she turned from the door to the building exit, the lights flicked off and she heard the classroom door close, followed by the sound of a key in a lock.

“I don’t remember seeing you before. What did you think?”

There was no one else around, but it still took Haruka a moment to realize she was being spoken to. As Haruka turned back, the instructor smiled, putting the key in her purse and catching up to Haruka in a few smooth strides. 

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Haruka answered honestly. “Or _felt_ anything like it. Or—” 

She cut herself off, feeling herself flush red at the accidental lie. She _had,_ in fact, felt something like this before. But the instructor seemed to understand what she wasn’t saying. She waved it off.

“It’s instinctual. The more you think, the harder it is.” The instructor held the door to the street open for Haruka as they both walked outside. “Will I see you next week?”

Haruka nodded vigorously, her smile bright. “Of course!”

“Good. You looked great out there. Be sure to practice!” The instructor winked, then she was gone.

× × × × ×

The previous week, Haruka had been on the way back to her office with a coffee when Ringo stopped her.

“Nanami, just the woman I was looking for.”

“Hm?”

He turned so he was walking with Haruka in the direction he’d come just moments previous. “I’ve been sent to find you. There is a legendary choreographer from Europe in town to give classes for agency hopefuls. I was planning on going there to scout until I learned she has already committed.”

The pout was obvious in Ringo’s voice, but neither of them acknowledged it.

In agency-world, it was bad etiquette for employees of one agency to spy on the inner machinations of another. The rules of idol engagement didn’t end with Saotome Gakuen, after all. It was something she was grateful for, not being bound by those rules herself.

Haruka put the pieces together quickly. “You want me to go spy for you?” 

Her presence at another agency recruitment wouldn’t be met with the same scrutiny. She, after all, already did work for other agencies. 

Ringo grinned. “I would _never_ ask such a thing. Of course, some idols who have already been accepted will be there too—maybe you could go, just to see what you think?”

Haruka mulled it over a moment, thinking of a plausible excuse in advance for her presence. When she had one, she tested its plausibility, found it passable, and nodded.

Ringo beamed. “Perfect! Here’s where they’ll be. Wednesday evening. It’s a dance class, so wear something comfortable.”

He produced a flier and handed it to Haruka, barely waiting for her to take it before he spun around again so fast that the long hair from his wig whipped over his shoulder.

For a moment, Haruka watched him go, then looked down at the flier.

When she saw what was on it, she swallowed.

× × × × ×

That had been over two weeks ago. Now, Haruka toed her shoes off and set her bag in the slots in the wall. Not wanting to cut it so close again, she’d made sure that her engagements for the day wrapped up well before the start of class—looking around the room, the only ones there were a group of women who looked a little younger than her. They were standing close to each other in a way that suggested they knew each other.

“Are you the composer?”

One of them, a woman with long green hair, was looking at Haruka. The others turned.

“Composer? I mean, yes, but I’m not sure—”

“Minami said to be looking for you,” another of them, short pink hair a few shades lighter than her own, supplied. “The instructor.”

“Oh.” Haruka blinked. “Why?”

“You’re not in trouble, if that’s what you’re thinking,” supplied a girl with long pink hair and a strong resemblance to the one who’d spoken previously. “Minami knows everything about everyone. She told us not to let you leave until she could talk to you.”

“Oh! About—”

The door opened, and the instructor breezed in, checking the door with her hip, her arms full of a large box. “ _About_ how we’re using your music today, for starters. Though I have to admit, I took the liberty of remixing it. I hope that doesn’t offend you.” 

“Not at all,” Haruka answered quietly.

“Good. Just needed to switch up the rhythm a bit for our steps.” There was a wink in her voice as instructor set the box down next to the audio-visual stand at the side of the room and made her way to the group that had congregated. She stopped near Haruka. “I wish I’d caught your name last week, or I’d have properly introduced myself. My name is Minami Yoko. I’m a talent manager with Divine Agency.” 

“And we’re her minions!” The girl with long pink hair followed, her hands clasped low. She shrugged toward Minami, who rolled her eyes, but she smiled, pointing around the room as she named off the others. “Rika, Tomoka, Ayumi, Umeka.”

“What my sister _means,_ is, we’re her trainees.” short pink hair—Tomoka—followed. 

“And we’ve heard your stuff. You’re really good! I’m glad to be meeting you, finally.” 

_Finally?_

“Ayumi here has had a crush on your work for _ages,_ ” green hair, Umeka, gave away. Purple, Ayumi, Haruka assumed, blushed bright pink.

“Later, ladies,” Minami supplied. She went back to the AV station. As they’d been talking, the room had filled—Haruka spotted the man she’d danced with last week near the back of the room. “Welcome, everyone—please, find your partners and get into position!”

He met Haruka’s eyes and walked over. 

“I’m glad to see you returned.”

“Thank you for partnering with me again,” Haruka answered, bowing slightly. “I know I’m not very good.”

“Nonsense, you’re a natural.” His smile was softer in his mouth than his eyes. He had the slightly hardened look about him as anyone who spends a lot of time in the public eye, and she regretted again that she couldn’t place him. “Are you ready?”

She nodded.

“Yes.”

“Three—two—one—” 

Minami counted them in, then hit the music. Haruka felt for it. After a measure, it kicked in, and her vision exploded in blue and white.

It was a HEAVENS song. The first one she’d ever composed for them as a seven-piece band. Haruka gasped.

“Ready?”

Her partner didn’t exactly _wait_ —on a certain beat, he squeezed the hand at her back and she stepped back as he stepped forward.

“Side,” he directed three steps later, indicating with his hand again. 

Haruka followed on instinct. Her mind was in three places at once: the original song, playing it at Raging’s headquarters—absorbing the differences in the remix—and in her own body, following in a dance. She felt a current of yellow interweave—and before she knew it, she was being spun.

She stepped back in, her eyes wide. Her partner smiled.

“Very good.”

“Ah, thanks,” she answered quietly.

“ _You_ focus on the music.” There were a few easier steps, and Haruka did as instructed. “I’ll show you where to go. Express what you hear.”

Haruka nodded. She closed her eyes, sending her body and mind back into the _her_ of a year and a half ago.

Even remixed, the song was the same. Eiichi was the lead on this song, and when she dropped her hold on her consciousness, it was the dance in his living room that she went back to. Not the original time she’d played this song at his office, nor even when the band had sung it at the studio. When she’d danced with him then, it had been to tango music—she remembered now, could identify it if she heard it again. Her partner was holding her now in a much looser stance than Eiichi had then, but it was still as everyone had been saying.

Instinct.

When her partner squeezed her hand and tapped her hip, she pivoted under his hand and flared back, then snapped back in. 

Closer than she’d intended. She opened her eyes, blushing at their proximity for a half second until he eased them back to lesson form.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Not at all, that was good. A memory?” 

His smile was warm, not judgmental. Haruka barely nodded.

“Good. Again.”

He signaled the next spin the same way, so she did it the same way, mindful to control the snap. She felt herself stiffen as she paid more attention to her body.

“Ah, I see,” her partner said. She’d been watching her feet, and she looked up. He seemed to see the question in her expression before she said anything. “There are basically two kinds of dancers in the world: artists and technicians. Both make beautiful dancers. Technicians pay close attention to their bodies as they move to express the dance with precision, but artists get tripped up if they focus on their bodies too much. Artists need to escape their bodies as they dance, and that’s how they express.”

His voice was low as he continued to steer them, just barely audible over the music. Every so often, he’d pause, steering them around another couple or switching into a different set of moves depending on where they were in the dance.

“I’m an artist, then,” Haruka answered, blushing. Her partner nodded.

“Yes, it seems that way. I’m the opposite, I’m a technician. There is no wrong way. Except to look at your feet.” His smile was soft again as he caught her looking down. “As you’re learning, you should focus on learning the steps and your partner’s signals. Close your eyes if you don’t know where to look.”

Haruka nodded and did as she was told. A few measures later, the song ended, and she opened her eyes.

× × × × ×

After her third lesson, the man she had been partnered with stopped coming. Minami had stopped her as she was coming in the class after and warned her:

“They’re filming on location. In Kyūshu. He had to go back. Normally we keep the same partners for the whole eight-week session, so since we’re an odd number, now, I’ll partner with you.” 

And that was that. Apart from the cognitive side of getting used to another person leading her, it was exactly the same. She learned that the man she had been partnered with had been Minami’s teacher, and that he was an old friend of hers apart from that.

“Who is he?”

“You never asked him?” Minami laughed, leading Haruka through a pass that involved them changing arms twice. When Haruka went over rather than under, Minami corrected. 

“I didn’t want to be rude.”

“Lovely, you are _so_ modest. Please never change.” They did the pass again, and Haruka got it right. Minami squeezed her hand and Haruka stepped back into frame. “He’s a director. You do know him, you just might not know it.”

She gave the name. Haruka paused half a second. Her eyes went wide. After a heartbeat, she sped through the back half of the step she’d missed and caught up.

Given that it was quite literally her _job_ to work with famous people, the names of famous people really shouldn’t surprise her anymore. But that one did. How had she not _known_ —

Minami ended that train of thought with a hand just above the small of Haruka’s back, signaling a pass into a spin that they’d learned the previous class. Haruka snapped back into the present, knocking slightly into one of Minami’s knees as she did. 

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright. You’ll get it. You’re doing well.”

It was a few more classes before she got that particular move. But she eventually did.

× × × × ×

The weeks progressed, and Haruka never missed a class. Before long, she was re-arranging her schedule around dance. It didn’t take too much doing—all the same, there was at least one time that Ringo had tried to book Haruka to arrange an ad on a Wednesday afternoon, and had been met with a knowing smile when she’d asked to hold the consult on a different day.

One day, Minami stopped her as she was leaving class. 

“Hold on, Lovely. I want to talk with you about something. Do you have anywhere to be?”

“Sure. And no. This is the last thing I do on Wednesdays, the only thing left is feeding my cat.”

Minami smiled. “Good. This shouldn’t take too long.” 

The class was at a phase of progress that step counting hadn’t been necessary for a few weeks, now. All Minami grabbed was her purse and what looked suspiciously like a folio of music. Haruka waited outside while Minami locked up, then walked with her. 

Rather than the building exit, though, Minami led them to a set of tables and chairs near the café at the entrance. She set her purse on the chair next to her, the folio on the table. Haruka sat across from her, and Minami waited until she was comfortable before she began.

“Let me preface this with a confession. I’ve done a fair amount of snooping on your work. Ringo is an old friend, and there are a couple of others at Shining who I’ve known over the years. But even without them, your work is hard to miss.”

Haruka blushed. 

“Thank you. I’ve been very lucky to work with so many talented musicians.”

Minami _looked_ at her. “It isn’t just them. It’s also you. I don’t know if you realize how talented you are. I’ve been in this industry a long time, and I’ve worked with dozens of producers. I can count on one hand the number that have been of your caliber.”

Haruka’s blush intensified. Minami smiled. 

“And I can tell, right now, that you aren’t told that nearly enough. But I digress.” Minami opened the folio. It was indeed full of music. She slid the top sheet over to Haruka. “ _This_ is what I wanted to talk with you about. Divine is about to debut another band, CADENZA. I’d like you to elevate this to something worthy of them, if you’re interested.”

Haruka picked up the paper and began to read. Apart from being in the same genre of music, the closest thing it reminded her of were some of Natsuki and Cecil’s individual songs from _years_ ago. She looked at Minami again over the paper.

“This is the debut song?”

“It’s a start. It needs work. A _lot_ of work.”

Haruka nodded. 

She’d debuted exactly one other band: STARISH. Six years ago.

“When do they debut?”

“We don’t have a set date, yet. I’d like for them to debut by the end of the year, but I can be convinced otherwise.”

Haruka nodded again. She handed the paper back to Minami, who aligned it with the others.

“Spring,” she mused. “If you can wait that long. When the cherry blossoms bloom.”

“Oh?” Minami sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “Tell me more. I’m intrigued.”

Haruka paused. She let her vision fall away for a moment. Even without the music in front of her, colors coalesced at the edge of her vision: soft pastels swirling against a morning sky.

“This reminds me of spring. Which makes sense for a debut, I think. Like flowers coming into bloom.”

“Wonderland,” Minami answered.

Haruka sprang forward. “Yes. Exactly. Wonderland. Let’s call it that.”

“So you’re in?”

There was a beat. Haruka paused, letting the possible outcomes flow across her mind for a moment. 

Then, she nodded. Minami grinned.

“Fantastic. They have a practice on Monday. You’ve already met some of them—Ayumi, Tomoka, Rika, and Umeka are in class with us. I’d love it if you could come.”

Haruka smiled. 

“Okay.”


	2. Strut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting a day after the first chapter b/c I'm bored lmao
> 
> Also I said I'd have this up by Thanksgiving, and _that_ was clearly a lie. I'm a 2L, and I blame law school.

It took a couple of weeks, but the flow of the evenings began to integrate into her life. On Mondays, Haruka sat in on CADENZA’s practices. The music was pretty generic—without anything much of their own recorded, yet, Minami drilled them on cohesion and presentation. 

At those practices, Haruka took notes. She noted who Minami tended to pair with who, whose vocals had which characteristics, who tended to dance with which styles, in which positions in the group. She had never worked with _twelve_ members simultaneously, and it made her head spin, sometimes. But if Minami believed she could do it, then she could do it.

That was what she told herself, anyway. She hadn’t actually sat down to compose anything yet, as she hadn’t been asked, yet.

On Wednesdays, then, was dance class. 

This was different. _This_ was the class Minami taught at the dance studio in Shibuya. Some members of CADENZA were regulars—Ayumi, Rika, Tomoka, and Umeka were there as often as she was, and the Tagami twins made appearances sometimes. But there were men in this class, meaning it obviously wasn’t with Divine. Divine was run entirely by women, and it worked exclusively with female artists.

Still, it was different. Very different. Haruka didn’t mind having some of her evenings taken this way—far from it. She enjoyed it.

But one Monday, she’d entered the rehearsal studio at Divine to find something very different.

“Ooh, who’s this?”

Haruka had just entered the room, setting her purse and clothes down by the wall as she always did. She turned around.

“Oh—"

But Minami was already supplying the answer for the strikingly beautiful girl with silver and gold hair. Said girl was staring at her, her fingers curled around a cocked hip. Haruka couldn’t read the look on her face.

It was Monday, but it wasn’t CADENZA in the room.

“The composer of tonight’s music. She has ballroom experience. I wanted you all to get a taste of something different.” Minami then turned to the girl who had addressed her. “Gentle, Ikumi.”

They were all beautiful. Most were taller than her, thin, toned from what must be hours in the gym every day. One, she noticed, was than any idol she’d ever seen. Like the others, except one, her hair was braided, her top draped low over her back. She was about her height, but solidly-built—a far cry from the waiflike girls usually scouted as idols. Haruka could see a faint outline of a tattoo that must cover part of her ribcage.

Another was tall. Very tall, probably as tall as Natsuki. 

_Interesting_ , she thought. Female idols often had a much more closely-tailored image than male idols. It was something that had bothered her for a long time, not that she was in much of a position to do anything about it.

She suddenly felt self-conscious. The women in the room _were_ idols, and they _definitely_ weren’t trainees. She glanced at the clock—she wasn’t early. But though CADENZA were nowhere to be found, Minami hadn’t told her _not_ to come.

A woman with short silver hair looked at Haruka, nakedly sizing her up. She smirked, then nodded at Minami as she pivoted toward the front of the room. Everyone was facing away from the door. There were five of them, six including Minami.

“Yours next, Lovely. We were about to do one more run-through before you came in. I’d like for you to watch,” Minami told Haruka.

“Okay,” Haruka answered. 

“She’s cute, Minami. You have good taste!”

Silver and gold winked at Haruka and slid back into position. She was a couple of steps behind the girl with short silver hair, forming the second part of a V along with a girl with long black and gold hair. The other two formed the back, a step diagonal from the middle two.

Moving back so she stood against one of the walls of the room, Haruka read the scene based on what she knew from seeing STARISH and others practice. The girl in the front, the one with short silver hair, was the leader of the group. Not all groups had leaders, but this one did. She could tell by the energy she was giving off. 

The girls moved into their opening stance. A couple of seconds later, a low, orchestral synth sounded. 

They started with a _snap._ The leader’s head whipped to the left, her arms bending at opposite right angles in a pose that made her think of Egyptian art. At the second pulse, the middle two mirrored the pose in the opposite direction. On the third, the two in the back held their arms out parallel. On the fourth, they raised their hands in a bell shape. They curved their upper bodies into the bell at sixteenth-note intervals, the movement simultaneously precise and almost snakelike. 

And then they were off. The music picked up and the middle and rear girls sashayed forward on beat, their arms still raised until they formed a shallower, wider V, then slithered down, launching into some of the most incredible choreography Haruka had ever seen. The base was clearly hip-hop, but the music itself had a quality to it that was almost Persian-sounding, or perhaps Indian. Faint but unmistakable. 

When the vocals began, Haruka felt them wash over her. She looked at Minami, who raised a brow, but did not look away from the dance. In the mirror that took up the entire back wall of the room, she could see the girls lip-synching. 

The chorus had a good hook. Instinctively, Haruka wanted to dissect it, but it was over too quickly and she let it wash away. She didn’t want to be left behind. 

On the second verse, the leader held her arms out parallel while the middle two girls trailed their hands up her body from thigh to wrist. 

Haruka was dumbstruck. The choreography was extremely sexual, far more so than any except perhaps a few members of HEAVENS or QUARTET NIGHT would attempt individually. They were all over each other, touching each other every few measures. At one point, silver and gold had the leader’s jaw in her fingers and was running her nose along her neck, almost as though she were going to kiss her. They broke apart before the first girl could do more than suggest. 

Back and forth they sashayed, swayed, _struck._ At the end of a line just before the bridge closed, the two now at the sides—the heavier girl and the taller girl—lifted the two that had been in the middle of the V into their original places, the toes of opposite legs of the ones who were lifted pointed toward the center. They pirouetted around and launched into the choreography of the final verse, the most aggressive yet but still an obvious riff on the motif of the opening verses. As the final note hit, they dropped into strong fighter crouches, their heads up, staring down their own reflections. Only when the sound was cut did one of them, the girl with black and gold hair, roll melodramatically to the ground. The leader glanced at Minami, smirking.

They knew they’d done well. Minami did, too. But Minami was looking at Haruka.

“They’re my best dancers,” Minami praised. A couple of the girls preened.

Haruka picked her mouth up off the floor.

“I don’t even know what to say. That was incredible.”

 _Incredible_ was an understatement. The pace had been brutal the whole dance. Even when they slowed, they still held themselves in ways that made Haruka able to see their strength, not just their skill. The heavier girl was unmistakably the best dancer in the group. When she lip synched her parts—her voice was breathy but strong, with a beautiful belt and just a hint of vibrato over words that came at the end of lines—her face matched the yearning of the lyrics Haruka had started to pay attention to as the song went on.

“We learned everything we know from her,” silver and gold answered. She laid an arm over Minami’s shoulder, who clearly didn’t mind that she was sweating. “She’ll _never_ admit this outside, but she had a secret other life in Korea.”

_“What?”_

Minami rolled her eyes, shrugging off the hand. “Another time. My past life is not why we’re here. We’re here for _you,_ Lovely.”

“I’m Ikumi,” silver and gold announced. Haruka nodded—the one Minami had acknowledged by name earlier. “Shizuka, Kanako, Ritsuko, Konomi. We’re HONEY BIRD.” With each name, Ikumi pointed around the room. Haruka repeated the names in her mind.

“Pleased to meet you,” Kanako—black and gold hair, blunt bangs—curtseyed a little, giggling.

“What is it that you do?” Konomi, the tall one with long black hair, addressed her. Her speaking voice was only a pitch or two higher than her singing voice, which was low and crisp.

“Oh—I’m a composer,” she replied. “For bands like you. Well, not like you exactly—"

Ikumi’s laugh was like a windchime. She walked up to Haruka again—or _sauntered,_ was more like it. “We get it, _Lovely._ ” She curled her hand over her hip, glancing back at their leader. “Shizu, what do you think?”

Haruka turned. Shizuka’s walk was more like a prowl. As when Haruka had arrived, she stared her down, her short hair swinging slightly with her steps. Haruka felt a chill. Shizuka stopped half a step behind Ikumi, a hand curled under her chin, raking her eyes up Haruka’s body from foot to head. Kanako stepped up as well.

“Are you good?” Shizuka turned to Minami, an eyebrow quirked.

“Would I have brought her here if she weren’t?”

“True,” Shizuka conceded. She faced Haruka again. “Well then. Let’s see what you can do.”

× × × × ×

Minami paired them off based on compatible height. Shizuka went with Kanako, Ritsuko with Konomi.

“Haruka, with Ikumi.”

Haruka whipped around. “Sorry, what—"

“Oh, it’s fine, Lovely. She’s a switch.” Shizuka smirked.

“A what—“

“It means, sometimes I like to be the mommy—“ Ikumi cocked her head at Kanako— “and sometimes, I like to be the baby.” She ignored Haruka’s look and took her hand, placing it for her on her shoulder. The way the male partner would lead the female—? “Show me, fearless leader.”

Ikumi giggled. Haruka glanced back at Minami again. “Minami-sensei—“

“Listen to your instincts,” came Minami’s answer to the question Haruka had not actually asked.

“You’ll do great!” Ikumi chimed. She was at least half a head taller than Haruka. Before Haruka could make any mental calculations, Ikumi started prancing backward in waltz steps, holding Haruka’s hand in place. Haruka has no choice but to walk with her forward.

Without registering her shock, Haruka felt her body take over. She had not consciously ordered it to do so. But when Ikumi’s prancing nearly sent them barreling into Ritsuko, Haruka corrected, steering them around her.

Minami was right. It really was just the reverse of what she had learned in class.

After a few seconds, Ikumi spun out from her, laughing. “You’re a natural! They should have made you an idol.”

“What—? Oh, I can’t—“

“Ikumi.”

Ikumi’s bell-like laugh rang out across the room. She released Haruka’s hands, pirouetting out from beside her until she came to a stop by Kanako.

“Apologies, sensei. I couldn’t help it! She’s so cute.”

Minami rolled her eyes.

“Yes. But we’re here to tango. And Haruka has been trained by me personally. She’s here to show you what I expect.”

Haruka’s eyes flew open. She shot a panicked look at Minami.

 _It’s okay_ , Minami said with her eyes. _You can do this._

Haruka swallowed. But she nodded once, stepping back into form. Ikumi placed a hand on her shoulder.

“You’ve got this, Lovely. I’m a most _malleable_ student.”

Ikumi winked. Haruka let her apprehension pool in her stomach, then siphoned it out of her body.

She nodded at Minami to start the music.

× × × × ×

_It was late in the evening. She was late, but the others wouldn’t mind. Especially not once they learned why. She’d made sure to fall asleep in the conference room early enough that there was still a believable reason why she would be there, but late enough that the people still in the building would be too preoccupied with getting wherever they went after work to bother waking her._

__

_After all, she napped in the office all the time. It was the perfect way to pick up juicy little tidbits of gossip to bring back to Shizu and Kana, or just to file away for her own use._

_She set her watch to buzz inconspicuously at her wrist at 8:30, quiet enough that no one would hear it but loud enough to wake her, not that that was difficult. She woke up if someone sneezed in the next house. It’s why the bedroom was soundproofed and had blackout curtains._

_At 8:30, she’d blinked awake, fixed her hair and clothes, and scanned the room for the presence of others before making her way out. She left the door open. The halls were dark except for the emergency lights, which is what she expected. Divine wasn’t the kind of place where people were expected to work themselves late into the night, though some diligent souls still chose to. Bless them._

_She turned the corner, passing the notice board where the agency’s voluntary commissions were tacked, past the communal kitchen and lounge by the welcome desk. Past the elevator and down the hall. There were four doors in this hall, besides the restroom: Sayoko, Sayoko’s conference room, the Recruiting Room, and Minami._

_The Recruiting Room always made her smile. She made sure to nap there regularly—how else would she have been able to hear half of CADENZA audition?_

_But, alas. Not today. Today, she was on a mission. None of the lights were on in the hall apart from the little U/Vs in Minami’s office that she used for her plants. She pulled a pin out of her hair and picked the lock._

_Minami’s was one of the only doors in the agency that was ever locked. And it made sense, really. Minami’s work was some of the most sensitive of anyone’s. All the same, she had yet to meet a lock she couldn’t pick. One of the little perks of growing up with a single alcoholic mother who had a habit of locking her out on purpose._

_This one was easy. A couple of simple maneuvers, a twist, and the pins sprang free. It wasn’t actually an easy lock to pick, she’d just lost track of how many times she’d done it._

_She closed the door behind her and made her way to Minami’s chair. Their manager’s desk was a case study in organized chaos. The desk had multiple little envelope windows obscured from visitors by a backing that let none of the mess show to outsiders. On top of the desk, besides a happy little English ivy against the wall, were a couple of stacks of papers. One, she knew from a previous snoop to be a set of forms anyone who did any business ever with a Divine artist had to sign. Boring. The other was arranged in the stack such that clusters of papers were oriented portrait, then landscape, then portrait—the clusters in any given direction were one set, then. She pulled the second-highest one out of the stack and flipped the top bunch to landscape, then began flipping through._

_Contracts. Concepts. Boring. She replaced the bundle and picked up another—it was full of_ invoices. 

_“Ew.”_

_She put it down. More contracts._ Super _boring. A stack of agency hopefuls—_ that _was mildly interesting, and she made note of a couple names that looked promising that she could stalk on social media later. But it wasn’t what she was here for._

_How in the world Minami kept track of all this, she didn’t know. When she reached the bottom, she replaced the stack as close to the way she’d found it as she could remember, resting her head in her hands for a moment and looking down at the desk._

_And then she’d seen it. She’d literally been right on top of it. Hiding in plain sight. She sat up and pushed the chair back enough that she could spread her hands out on either side of the music on the desk._

_She read, twirling a silver and gold strand around her finger. It_ slisshed _against her long acrylic nail._

WONDERLAND  
_Nanami Haruka_

_FOR: CADENZA_

_She read, tapping out the beat with her toe against the deep-pile throw rug on Minami’s side of the desk. When she was done, she picked it up, sat back in the chair, and read it again._

_Then she set it precisely as she’d found it, pushed in Minami’s chair, and left the office. She was already composing a message by the time she’d opened and re-locked the door and made her way to the elevator._

—MINAAAA 

—IDC WHAT U NEED TO DO

—I WANT HER

—MAKE HER STAY

—(づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ

_She indicated the ground floor, firing off another couple of texts in the meantime. By the time the doors opened, she’d received a reply:_

—It’s her choice, but I’ll see what I can do.


	3. Sugar High

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably didn't need to bump the rating until next time, but better safe than sorry.

The next time she was at Divine, Haruka was greeted at the agency’s front desk by a positively _glowing_ Ikumi. She offered a hand, which Haruka took—only for Ikumi to pivot so they were next to each other, holding hands like a couple. Haruka blushed. Ikumi was walking half a step ahead and didn’t notice.

Until she did. She turned back, smiling broadly as she tapped the call button for the elevator.

“I’m so glad you’re back!”

“Oh! Yes. Minami-san was very insistent. I mean—” Haruka’s eyes widened, and the hand that Ikumi was holding twitched as though to fly to her lips. Ikumi’s hand tightened fractionally around it. “I want to be here. I was so impressed by your performance yesterday.”

“Silly, that was nothing! You should see us _live._ ” Ikumi winked, not dropping Haruka’s hand as the door opened and she led them inside. With her free hand, she tapped a number, and the door fell closed.

Ikumi held her hand until they reached the room where they were composing that day. The room had a long conference table taking up two thirds of it. But at the back was a sectional couch facing a minibar, complete with a sink, with a slim refrigerator tucked into the corner. The rest of HONEY BIRD, save Ritsuko, were scattered over the massive sectional couch on that side—Ritsuko was out on a glass-bottomed balcony, the doorway open to let in the breeze.

 _“Look who I found,”_ Ikumi sing-songed as she opened the door. Only when they were inside did she drop Haruka’s hand, skipping over to the couch. She plopped down on one side of it between Shizuka and Kanako. Konomi, who was sitting on the perpendicular half with her feet up, lowered them so Haruka could sit.

“Oh, you’re fine, Konomi-san! I have room.”

“Ah, no. Scooch.” Ritsuko had breezed back into the room, closing the balcony door behind her and sitting between Haruka and Konomi. She turned to Haruka. “I’m Ritsuko. We didn’t meet properly the other day. I’m assuming _these three_ have already introduced themselves.”

There was an eye roll in Ritsuko’s tone, but also a light note. _These three_ was supposed to mean something.

“ _Ritsu,_ darling, we only know as much as you do. And of course, what I learned yesterday from snooping in Minami’s office after-hours.” The pout that Ikumi had started with lifted as Ikumi winked at Haruka. “Our dear manager neglected to tell us of your illustrious background. So when I learned how much _domination_ you were responsible for—well.”

“What she’s _trying_ to say, through all the _innuendo,_ is,” Konomi interrupted. “She asked for you. We all did. Your catalogue is very impressive.”

“Oh.” Haruka blushed and looked down at the purse on her lap. She’d brought a work sample. It would seem she didn’t need it. “Thank you. I’ve been very fortunate.”

“Nonsense,” Shizuka interrupted. “ _They’ve_ been very fortunate.”

“We’re here for a piece of the action,” Kanako added with a wink.

“ _International tours?_ The _SSS_ games? Come on.” Ritsuko grinned. “Don’t be modest.”

“But it’s sweet that you are,” Kanako answered. She tapped Haruka’s knee. 

They went on for hours. They lost track of _time._ They had done their research where she was concerned: by the time they had moved on from recounting parts of her catalogue that even _she_ had forgotten about, they’d fallen into stories and inter-agency gossip. It was after sunset by the time Haruka left without getting a single note on the page.

“ _Lovely,_ will you meet us tomorrow? We have more work to do,” Ikumi said as they were gathering their things to go.

“But not here,” Shizuka added.

Kanako nodded. “I’ll get you the address. The agency is closed tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Haruka answered.

× × × × ×

The next day, Haruka stood on the curb at the gate of a large house in one of the farther districts of the city, looking at her phone in disbelief. Behind her, the black cab drove away. She watched it go.

But no, it was the right address. Haruka started up the driveway, a long, winding path wide enough for two cars to cross. 

At the door, she made to ring the doorbell when the door opened, revealing a middle-aged woman Haruka vaguely recognized but couldn’t place. She was dressed all in black, but not the way family help would dress. The woman surveyed her. 

“Nanami Haruka?”

“Yes,” Haruka answered.

The woman smiled. Just a bit, but enough to notice. “Ah, yes. The one the girls can’t seem to get enough of. They’re upstairs. But—” The woman cut herself off. She glanced at the stairs, then back at Haruka. “You’re early. _Two hours_ early.”

“I—” She blushed. There was no good way to explain this except the truth. “I wasn’t sure where I was going, exactly, so I wanted to leave extra time. I can come back, if it’s inconvenient—?”

“You get that lost sometimes?”

There was a smile in her voice. Haruka blushed.

“…Is it bad that the answer is yes?”

The woman shook her head, laughing quietly. There was a long beat as the woman appeared to think something over.

“No, it’s alright. They were composing upstairs when I left them about half an hour ago. Wait here a moment.”

The woman made her way to an alcove in the wall where an old-fashioned telephone was stationed. It matched the décor of the house, she realized—the large entryway was open and spacious, featuring cream-colored marble everywhere and beautiful Greek-style columns holding up the ceiling. There was a curving staircase along one side that led to an exposed walkway upstairs. She couldn’t see much beyond the alcove where the woman had stepped.

She hung up the phone, walking back to Haruka. 

“You can go up, if you’d like. Turn right at the top of the stairs and it’s the last door on your left. Just—no need to hurry.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

The woman shouldered her bag.

“I’d escort you but I have a meeting I need to attend in the city. Make yourself at home.”

“Thank you,” Haruka said again.

“My pleasure. My name is Okada Sayoko. It’s good to finally meet you.”

Without waiting for a response, the woman smiled at her, then left. Haruka watched the heavy door close behind her.

She took several breaths. _The director of the agency,_ she thought. Her heart fluttered. This was not how she imagined she would meet her. Had she said the right things—?

Haruka shook her head, stopping that train of thought. Then she made her way upstairs.

She recited Sayoko’s directions in her head as she went. Right at the top of the stairs, then down to the last door on the left. The door was slightly open. She pushed on it.

“Shizuka-chan, Ikumi-chan, Kanako-chan, I’m here—”

She looked up. The three of them stopped moving, only Shizuka turning slightly toward her from where she stood against the wall.

In front of her, Kanako was seated on a large white chair. She was wearing only black lingerie and some kind of harness, and her hands were tied behind her back. Ikumi, in a white corset, black thong, and a garter belt holding up black stockings, was seated at an angle to her, combing her hands through Kanako’s hair. A thick black choker peeked through her silver and gold curls.

“Did I say you could stop?”

Shizuka turned back to them. She was dressed all in black leather: black corset top that bared her shoulders, black leather leggings tight against her skin except for large cutouts on the insides of her thighs, held closed by a series of thin bands. At her side, Haruka noticed that she was carrying a black horse crop.

“ _Shizu._ Please can we play with her?”

Haruka drew in a breath. _What is this—?_

Shizuka looked at Haruka for several seconds, appearing to assess something that was lost on Haruka. 

Then, she stepped away from the wall, making her way to the two on the chair. She ran a hand through Ikumi’s hair.

“Another time, dear. For now, we do need to stop.”

Shizuka held a finger to Ikumi’s lips before she could say anything to protest. Ikumi pouted around it, then touched her tongue to the tip. Shizuka smiled, leaning in to the ear closest to Kanako and whispered something she couldn’t hear. Ikumi glanced back at Haruka.

She sighed against Shizuka’s shoulder. Shizuka drew a hand through Ikumi’s hair again, then unfastened Kanako’s restraints.

As soon as Kanako was free, Ikumi bounced off the arm of the chair and practically skipped up to Haruka, stopping in front of her with her arms clasped in front of her, beaming. 

Her demeanor had changed _instantly._ Haruka blinked. 

“Welcome to _Okada Palace,_ ” she said with a flourish. “I’m your host, Kondo Ikumi. I understand you are searching for your next great song?”

There was a beat.

“Yes,” she answered. “I’m here to compose, like we talked about yesterday. But I can come back, if this is a bad time—?”

“ _Nonsense._ ” With that, Ikumi took Haruka’s wrist and began to lead her further into the room.

When Haruka had arrived, she had been too dumbstruck by the scene she had encountered to really take in where she was. The room was like the anteroom of a European suite, almost gothic in style: deep red walls, heavy curtains, a chaise and bench in a deep mahogany, the wide desk that matched the chair Kanako was sitting in tucked into an alcove in the wall. The room was lined on two sides with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, the shelves of which were packed full of beautifully-bound volumes, both literature and music.

And in the back of the room, just beyond where the light from the window hit in the mid-afternoon sun, was a _stunning_ baby grand.

“Mama said to tell you that it’s a Steingraeber,” Kanako said as she stood out of the chair to follow wherever they were going. “She said you would know what that meant. And she said that you can come over and play it whenever you want!”

Haruka gasped, her reply almost a whisper. 

“Kanako-chan.” She looked at Kanako with wide-eyes, then at Ikumi. She touched the fingers Ikumi still had curled around her wrist. “Ikumi-chan, may I see?”

Ikumi squeezed her hand once, then let go. 

“Of _course,_ darling.”

Haruka practically floated over to the instrument. Fewer than 80 of these pianos were made every year. Even one of this size would cost well over a year’s worth of pay for her, maybe multiple years. 

With the reverence of a worshipper in a most sacred place, Haruka ran her fingers along the curved edge of the frame, careful not to leave any fingerprints. She walked around to the keys. The fallboard was already raised. 

Delicately, she placed her fingers on it, but did not press.

“Kanako-chan,” she repeated. “I can really compose on this?”

“Anytime you like,” Shizuka repeated, answering for Kanako. She had set the horse crop against the chair in the middle of the room and was smiling warmly at Haruka. She walked up, laying a hand on the lip below the keys a couple of feet from Haruka’s hand. “And she emphasized _any time._ Which goes for us as well. Stay,” she added. “Compose with us.”

Haruka swallowed. She nodded.

“Yay!” Ikumi bounced, clapping her hands together. She came up to Haruka again, taking her wrist. “Let’s go back to the bedroom. There’s more room there.”

“Huh—?”

“Don’t worry, Lovely,” Shizuka answered, cutting off Haruka’s train of thought as she closed the fallboard with a soft _click._ “Nothing in this house happens without express consent. We were already working there earlier. Besides,” she stepped away from the piano, walking past Ikumi so that she was leading, adding with a wink: “They need to get dressed.”

Ikumi led Haruka through the door Kanako had opened, then let go of Haruka’s wrist when they entered the room while she and Kanako promptly darted into the closet on one side. Haruka could see into it enough to know that it went deep. Shizuka closed the bedroom door behind them.

It was every bit as luxurious as the anteroom. It was also _massive,_ easily large enough to fit Haruka’s entire apartment. There were two vanity dressers along one wall, with a third opposite, and a tall, matching wardrobe in the corner. A throne-like reading chair was angled into the opposite corner. Near it, a long table that looked like it could seat eight people rested against one wall, the bench that must serve as its seating pulled diagonally out from under it. The table was covered in papers, colored tabs, markers, computers. Their workspace. 

Shizuka sat gracefully in the chair at one end of the table, crossing her legs, watching Haruka observe. Her stare wasn’t loud, exactly, but it was sharp. Haruka could feel it poking at her. 

She watched the closet for a moment before finally looking at the bed.

In her 21 years, Haruka had seen a handful of bedrooms that were not her own. Her grandmother’s in the country: simple, natural furnishings, divided off from the rest of the house by traditional screen doors. Tomo’s, flashy and modern, with three closets, including one devoted entirely to shoes. And then there were the ones that made her blush. Tokiya’s, crisp and minimalist, where they had christened every surface in the two nights she’d spent there the summer after their first tour. Eiichi’s, which looked similar to this, where he’d taken her apart piece by piece, teaching her how to articulate her desires.

She was not the most sexually experienced, but she was not a prude, either. The bed was enormous, tall, four-postered, the headboard padded and engraved, made of the same rich mahogany as the furniture outside. Black, tasseled curtains were drawn up around the top, creating a canopy. There were details she didn’t understand but could guess at, like pairs of slots carved into the headboard at various heights that were looped through with black fabric rings. What looked like a sleeping mask resting against one of the pillows.

She heard laughter out of the closet. Haruka blushed, then turned back to Shizuka and made her way to the table.

“Do you have any questions?” 

Haruka was rooting in her purse for her composing notebook. When she found it, she set her bag on the floor and looked at Shizuka, who had not stopped looking at her since they’d entered the room.

“I guess, if I can see what you were working on since yesterday…?”

Shizuka finally looked away, closing her eyes for a moment and laughing under her breath. “Of course. See for yourself.” She nodded in the direction of the mess of papers on the table. “What I meant was, do you have any questions about anything else? Like, for example, what we do here?”

Haruka had about a thousand questions about that. But none that she dared ask aloud. The nature of Shizuka, Ikumi, and Kanako’s relationship was blindingly obvious _now_ , but Haruka had never encountered a situation where multiple people were in a relationship with _each other._

And she had _certainly_ never been invited to participate.

Haruka blushed, clearing her throat.

“It feels strange to ask about something so private,” she answered in nearly a whisper. “But I’m not offended or troubled, if you’re concerned about that—”

Shizuka laughed once, smiling at Haruka. “ _Lovely,_ if you had a problem with lesbians, you wouldn’t be working at Divine. Besides Minami’s latest crop, the only straight arrow in the agency is Ritsuko.”

“Not Konomi—?”

Haruka’s hand flew to her lips. She hadn’t meant to think that question out loud. Shizuka laughed again.

“ _No._ No. Konomi is asexual. Just a very good actress.”

Haruka’s head spun. Minami, she’d known about. She’d began counting off other names and faces in the agency when Ikumi and Kanako re-entered the room, dancing, but dressed: Ikumi still wearing the corset, paired now with black shorts, and Kanako in a long sweater dress that dipped low down one shoulder. Ikumi led Kanako out in an elaborate spin, and when she released her, Kanako kept it up for another revolution and sat down at Haruka’s right, her black and gold hair swirling around her.

“She’s no fun,” Kanako pouted.

“Konomi-chan finds all of our _antics_ very _tiresome,_ ” Ikumi echoed, sliding onto Haruka’s left between her and Shizuka and somehow slumping gracefully onto the table, even tapping her forehead on it. She had tied her silver and gold hair up in a high ponytail with a long black sash, the tails of which brushed Haruka’s leg as she sat up. “Which is why she isn’t here. She only composes at the studio.”

“And Ritsuko had a date,” Kanako added with a wink. 

“ _What?_ That’s allowed?!” 

There was a beat. The three bandmates looked at each other over the table, then burst out laughing.

“Of _course,_ Lovely. What else are we supposed to do in the _prime of our youth?_ ”

There was clearly a joke here that she didn’t understand. Shizuka’s voice had dipped into another person’s cadence, one she didn’t recognize. Ikumi touched Haruka’s forearm again.

“Divine isn’t a _convent,_ doll.”

Kanako giggled again. “How would we be able to write songs about love if we weren’t allowed to experience it?”

Haruka blinked.

Something she’d always known was untrue, but had never questioned the truth of until that moment, unhooked itself from her consciousness and floated away. Haruka had a sudden feeling of being cut free from it. 

Divine had no school that compared to the one she had been through at Shining. Without a school, there was no place for a principal to enact strict rules about what idols-to-be could or could not do in their free time. And she’d spent enough time with Minami in recent weeks to know that a tight leash was not the way she managed trainees. There were no student dormitories, no master class, no senpais, no assignments to speak of _at all_ besides the groups themselves—

Of course, Shining’s rules had never applied to _her_ once she was out of the academy. But hadn’t that been precisely what had doomed her relationship with Tokiya?

Haruka’s mind reeled. With one simple comment, everything she had ever known about agency dynamics was thrown out the window.

_Why am I here? What’s going on—?!_

“Oh,” was all she said.

The girls stopped laughing. They shared another look, then Haruka felt Kanako’s hand on her knee under the table.

“We’ve heard about how strict Shining is,” she said. “‘No love.’ It sounds awful.” 

Ikumi leaned her head on her hand. “If you stay with us, you won’t have to deal with that anymore.”

There was a beat. A stone settled in Haruka’s stomach.

 _“No!”_ She squeaked, halfway standing up. Her vision swam dark blue. She sat back down, clapping a hand over her mouth. She dropped it, looking at Shizuka. “I’m sorry, am I here because I’m being taken from Shining—?”

Shizuka stood from her seat, coming to stand behind Haruka. She felt one hand between her shoulderblades, the other over the center of her chest, just below her collarbone.

“Breathe,” she said.

Haruka took a breath. Her heart raced.

“Again. Slowly.”

She did. She counted out three on the inhale, three on the exhale. After two more, the hand on her chest dropped and Shizuka tucked a lock of Haruka’s hair behind her ear. Haruka looked at her questioningly.

She scanned herself. Panic, for her, was dark blue—dark blue flooding her vision meant her panic was strong enough that others noticed it. 

_Why am I panicking?_

“You were out of alignment,” Shizuka answered the question she hadn’t asked aloud, her look surprisingly tender. “Remember: nothing in this house happens without express consent. Including taking you away from anyone.”

“Your throat and heart,” came Kanako’s voice from Shizuka’s other side. She leaned into the table to look at Haruka. “Something you love but can’t talk about.”

“We understand,” Ikumi said, taking Haruka’s hand for a moment and squeezing. “Sometimes things get stuck. Especially if you’ve never had an outlet for them.”

“Huh—?”

After a beat, Shizuka dropped the hand that had been on her back and went back to her seat. She reached over and nudged Haruka’s notebook toward her.

“Let’s write this out. That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”

Haruka took another slow breath, then another. Then, she nodded.

“Okay,” she answered, smiling weakly. “But I should warn you now. I’m not very good at this.”

Ikumi was resting her head on her hand again, and she smiled warmly at Haruka, her head tipped toward her. After a beat, she asked:

“Haruka, have you ever been in love?”

Haruka’s heart picked up. She felt herself blush. But she nodded.

“Yes. Once.” She sat back a bit, looking forward, not at anyone. Memories bloomed in her vision, flicking around the edges like snapshots of movies. Herself as a girl, wistfully watching HAYATO performances on her computer. Tokiya talking to her at school, running into him in the hallway. That scene at the carnival. Him kissing her in the hallway after the last show of their first tour, and again on the bridge. She smiled a bit sadly as she looked back at Ikumi after most of them had passed. “With the same person. For many years.”

“Do you still love him?” Kanako asked.

Haruka looked at her, searching herself the way Eiichi had taught her.

“Yes,” she answered after a moment. “But it’s different now. I loved him for many years, and he loved me too for some of them. He couldn’t do anything about it because of Shining’s rules. There was a brief time when he did anyway, and it was beautiful. But it never came to anything more.”

Haruka felt the prick of tears. She let them well for a moment, but they didn’t spill over.

“Someone in STARISH?” Shizuka asked, her voice surprisingly quiet. Haruka looked at her and nodded.

“Yes.”

“How did he make you feel?”

Haruka smiled. It was warm, but also sad. The edges of her vision were green-grey. One tear did fall as she answered. “Like I hung the stars.”

“How appropriate,” Shizuka answered through a slight laugh. But it wasn’t condescending. Haruka laughed a bit too once she caught on.

“I never thought of it that way before. But yes.”

There were a few moments of silence as Haruka sat with her feelings, letting them swim inside her. After a moment, the hand Ikumi’s head had been resting on fell to the table with a _thump._

“I know what I want us to write this time.” She looked around, her eyes bright. “Let’s do a ballad. But not gentle. I want it to _bleed_ this feeling.”

“That sounds intense,” Kanako answered, laughing a bit. “I like it. Shizu?”

Haruka looked at Shizuka. She was sitting back in her chair, thumbing her chin. Thinking about something. After a moment, she nodded.

“Yes. We haven’t done one of those in a while. Something you would dance to in a ballroom, right before you and an attractive stranger part way for the night. But you don’t _want_ to part ways, necessarily.” She looked at Haruka, her eyes flashing. “What do you think?”

Haruka blushed. Unbidden, the thought of Eiichi pulling her impossibly close while they danced in his living room flashed in her mind. 

“Yes. Let’s do it.”

“Let’s go to Mama’s piano,” Kanako said, jumping up and smiling widely at Haruka. “I want to hear what you can make it do.”

× × × × ×

It was late in the night that Haruka left the house. The girls had offered that she stay the night—the thought of the scene she’d seen when she arrived flashed in her mind, and Haruka had blushed fiercely, shaking her head.

“I don’t want to impose,” she’d answered.

“Alright,” Shizuka had answered with a knowing grin.

Her perceptiveness was on par with Eiichi’s. She’d been thinking it all evening. This particular reasoning wasn’t difficult to guess. Unlike Eiichi, though, Shizuka held all the cards, and she did not show her hand. 

So when Shizuka produced a flash drive, holding it out to Haruka for her to take, Haruka blinked.

“Is this music—?”

“Of a kind,” Shizuka said around a grin. “I’d love to hear what you think.”

“Okay,” Haruka answered, taking the drive and tucking it into her bag. “Goodnight. Thank you.”

“Goodnight, Lovely.”

Haruka walked out. Shizuka held the door, watching her as she left. Only when Haruka had gotten into the cab she’d called did she see her let the door fall closed.


	4. Lemon Eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING. 
> 
> I updated the listing to include an "underage" warning for this story because there is a scene at the end of this chapter that implies a sexual situation with a minor. Said minor was, in this story's canon, almost of age when the situation ORIGINALLY took place (and was of age at all relevant moments in the story's present), but I feel like mentioning it because the law doesn't care when your birthday is. Adulthood is a bright line.

The next day, a check-in text from Ikumi reminded her of the drive Shizuka had given her as she’d left.

Unsure of what she’d find, Haruka rooted around in her purse for the notebook she used for compositions, bringing it to her desk when she found it. At Kanako’s house, they’d gotten pretty far—nearly the whole melody was done, everything but the bridge. She had a good sense of what they wanted to weave into the rest of it. And, to her immense surprise, they’d let her take the lead. Encouraged it, even. Ikumi and Kanako had pressed her to articulate her feelings, and Shizuka had steered them, pointing out with sharp insight where she needed them to do _more._

Haruka plugged the drive into her computer, powering it on. There were no folders, only thumbnails of what looked like song titles.

She clicked on the first one. It wasn’t a music player that popped up, but a video player.

The screen on it was dark for a moment. Then Ikumi’s smiling face appeared in front of the camera, sitting in what Haruka recognized as the chair in the piano room.

Her hair was half up, the style messier than anything Haruka had seen her wear, a pink shawl held loosely behind her back over her elbows. The straps of her white top were so thin, she wondered how they were doing any work at all.

“Today, March 3rd, is Kana’s birthday. She has asked for something very special. And who are we to deny our beautiful lily anything?” In the video, Ikumi paused theatrically, crossing her legs. “As you know, our Kana has a thing for…getting caught.” She winked at the camera. “So let’s go see what she’s up to, shall we?”

Ikumi leaned forward, and the display shut off for a moment. When it turned back on, Ikumi was holding the camera, walking back toward the bedroom.

In the camera’s audio, she could hear soft voices from inside. Ikumi leaned into the frame of the camera for a moment, opening the door.

Haruka had just enough time to register Shizuka’s hair in the video—buzzed on the sides with razored lines in it, the top spiky and short—and see her smirk at Kanako, whose back was to the camera as she let the black satin robe she was wearing fall to the floor, wearing nothing underneath.

Haruka gasped, a hand flying to her mouth. She snapped her computer shut and stared over it, wide-eyed, blushing furiously.

_Oh._

Shizuka had said there was music… _of a kind_ on the drive.

Gingerly, she opened her computer again.

The video had paused automatically when she’d closed her computer. When it didn’t start playing immediately, she minimized the video window and opened a search engine.

For a few moments, she stared at it, the cursor flicking in the search bar, and held a finger to her lip. She typed the first thing she thought of in the search bar and hit _return_ before she could change her mind.

Headshots of Okada Sayoko lined the search results.

She scrolled down, reading headlines, and clicked on one near the top that caught her eye. It was an interview Sayoko had done a few months ago with Nylon Japan. 

She read through it, her mind whirring.

Then another.

And another.

She’d sat down at her computer mid-afternoon. By the time she put it away again, having chased queries around the Internet until her head spun, it was late in the evening, and she only stopped because her cat was swirling around her ankles, butting against her legs, reminding her that it was dinnertime.

× × × × ×

The next day, Haruka knocked at Minami’s office door at the studio.

“Come in,” she heard from inside.

Minami’s door was rarely closed when she was in her office. But when Haruka walked in, she closed it, making Minami look up from the papers she had been reading through.

Haruka sat in one of the chairs in at the small table near Minami’s desk. Minami had a thing for plants—there were dozens of them, on surfaces, bookshelves, even in planters mounted to the wall. Haruka traced around a leaf of the arrowhead vine on the table, watching her finger.

“Did Shizuka give you a drive full of porn?”

Haruka’s head snapped up. Instantly, she felt her face go red. 

“How did you—”

Before she could answer, Minami sighed loudly, sliding her glasses down a bit as she pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Sayoko told me she’d run into you as she was leaving the house yesterday. I put together the rest from there. It’s not hard, not when their antics are so _damn_ predictable.” Minami took a breath. “I’m going to have a talk with her. I don’t care what they do in their bedroom. But dropping that on you without warning is not okay.” She looked at Haruka, lowering her hand. “She _did_ do it without warning, right?”

“Ah—yes? Kind of? She said there was music on it,” Haruka answered. She looked at the spider plant mounted to the wall opposite. It was in a conical glass vase, its roots visible through the rocks it was planted in. 

She looked back at Minami, biting her lip a bit. “I don’t want her to get in trouble.”

Minami laughed softly. “She won’t. Not in the way you’re thinking. But she broke one of the Cardinal Rules of Gay, and as her Senior Gay, I’m going to talk with her.” She shook her head. “Don’t give straight girls porn, unless they ask for it. That’s not cool. And it’s not good domme behavior.”

“Oh,” was all Haruka said. 

Something Shizuka had said the previous night came to mind: _the only straight arrow in the agency is Ritsuko._ She’d had a feeling about Minami since the first dance class she’d taken, but hearing Minami reveal her truth, even sideways, still made a little something shift in her understanding of her friend and sort-of boss.

Minami continued without acknowledging it further. 

“You know what that is, now, I’m guessing?”

Haruka blushed again. _Domme,_ she meant. “Yes. I had a general idea, but I looked it up…after.”

“After?”

She nodded. “I only saw about about a minute of one video. But I had questions, so I started looking things up online. About the kind of thing they do, and what it’s like to be…gay, in Japan.” Haruka traced the leaf again, still blushing. “Just…information. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about.”

Minami relaxed a bit. It was subtle, but Haruka felt the change in the room.

“Good, because you now know almost everything that I know about them. My one rule about their relationship is that what they do in their bedroom needs to stay out of the agency, for obvious reasons.”

Haruka nodded, digesting. 

After a beat, Minami continued. “What was it you wanted to talk about, then?”

Haruka took a breath, pausing. Her reading the previous evening had taken her all over the place. But ever since she’d read that first interview with Sayoko, something had been nagging her.

“How did Divine start?” 

Minami tipped her head. Haruka could see that that wasn’t one of the questions she’d thought she’d be asked. She sat back in her chair.

“How much were you able to find online?”

“Not a lot,” Haruka admitted. “At least, not about the start. I know Sayoko-san started the agency from almost nothing, but not how or why.”

Minami smiled, crossing an arm over her chest.

“Sayoko formed Divine as a kind of safe haven for artists who were considered non-traditional by the music industry. She’s always had a thing for underdogs and diamonds in the rough. It’s one of my favorite things about her.” 

Haruka nodded. The interviews hadn’t explicitly discussed this about her. She’d now met Sayoko all of once, but she trusted Minami’s opinion more even on matters they both knew about.

“It started with a band called VIRGO. Sayoko has connections all over the industry, and she learned about them through an acquaintance at another agency. They’d appeared as contestants on a reality show that served as a feeder for bands and had all been dismissed for one reason or another that wasn’t related to their talent. Deep voice, too tall, not pretty enough, too sexy. And one, who was in every way a perfect, traditional idol, was gay, and the producers knew it.” She waved her hand as she counted off the reasons. Then Minami looked down, smiling, picking up a pen on her desk.

“Sayoko approached them and personally took them in, and used her own resources to promote the _hell_ out of them. Divine was effectively formed after that.” Minami began spinning the pen over her fingers. Haruka watched the movement. “It was a big financial risk for her. Her husband is the president of Ascalon Holdings, but Sayoko has always managed her own earnings that she’d racked up over the years from her classical career. She didn’t want his help. She built a few more bands before I came into the picture, producing them herself and eventually hiring in-house choreographers.”

“Wow. How many years was that?”

“Five or six. Besides VIRGO, most of them had a few hit singles but never gained much ground.”

Haruka nodded, putting the pieces together. She paused. “And then, you came in?”

“And then I came in.” Minami flashed a grin. “I was working on EUROVISION at the time. Sayoko lured me in with the promise of double what I was making there and nearly full oversight of talent acquisition. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

“How did you end up at EUROVISION?” Haruka paused again. “If you don’t mind me asking. You don’t have to answer.”

Minami’s smile turned sad. Immediately, Haruka regretted the question. But Minami kept speaking.

“This isn’t a story I tell often, but I trust you.” She set the pen she’d been spinning down on her desk and took a breath. She took off her glasses, holding them loosely in one hand. “Many years ago, I was in a Korean girl band called LADYKILLER. My stage name was Koko.” 

Haruka’s eyes widened. Minami continued, not seeming to notice.

“My mother is Korean, my father is Japanese. They divorced when I was in elementary school and I went to live with my mother in Korea.” 

Haruka nodded, and Minami looked up in time to see it. “I was educated in international schools and was scouted by a talent agency when I was singing in a mall, just goofing off with some friends. I was 16, and I went in as a trainee.” 

Minami paused, taking a breath. “The Korean idol industry is more intense than the Japanese. I’d had some training in composition and performance at school, but the program they put us through was much more rigorous. Singing and dancing, yes, but also a thorough education about how to appear in public to help the agency sell our band.” 

She paused again. Something in her voice made it clear to Haruka that this was difficult for her, and Haruka was incredibly grateful. She tried to project that as Minami continued. “After about two years of training, maybe a little more, I debuted with LADYKILLER. There were four of us: Soojin, Rebecca, Miyeon, and me.”

Haruka nodded.

“LADYKILLER was pretty successful. We were edgier than a lot of other bands, and that set us apart. We built a loyal national following, even went on a couple of international tours.” 

Minami closed her eyes. 

“I had known that I was attracted to women since I was a teenager. Korean society is still not very accepting of that, so I kept it a secret. Even from my mother. _Especially_ my mother. My mother is Catholic, and it’s _definitely_ not allowed there. Not the way my mother was raised.” Haruka nodded again. “But, by some freak twist of fate, I wasn’t the only person like me in the band. And during our second international tour, I was caught having sex with Miyeon.”

Involuntarily, Haruka gasped. Minami flashed a quick smile.

“The story would have _massively_ damaged the agency’s reputation if had gotten out, and it would have permanently throttled any of our chances at a solo career. As a condition of keeping the secret, LADYKILLER was forced to disband after the tour ended. Publicly, they painted it as a natural termination of our contracts. Soojin and Rebecca continued on with them as solo artists and were eventually added to the lineups of other bands. And Miyeon moved to America.”

“Do you still talk?” Haruka asked quietly.

Minami shook her head. “No. But I’ve followed her life from a distance over the years. She is a well-respected choreographer in Los Angeles and is married to a talk show host named Vanessa. They have a young daughter.” Minami picked up the pen again. “I came here to Japan briefly, but I wasn’t ready to be here on my own yet. So I went to Europe and got a job with EUROVISION.”

“And then Sayoko-san found you,” Haruka supplied.

Minami nodded. “Yes. I’d been with EUROVISION for a couple of years by then. In addition to the salary and to the extremely promising role in the agency, Sayoko also hired me to launch a band she’d put together.” Minami grinned, now. “A certain set of troublemaking women among them, plus a couple of her favorite kind: talented young women who had been rejected for reasons unrelated to their talent.” 

“HONEY BIRD,” Haruka guessed.

“Yes. I won’t say I was _entirely_ responsible for HONEY BIRD, but between Sayoko and myself, we were able to launch them pretty far. VIRGO had disbanded by then, but were still floating around the agency as solo artists and actresses. But having a second act of VIRGO and HONEY BIRD’s caliber come out of Divine was what cemented our agency as a real threat to the likes of Shining and Raging. Once they were established, we floated a couple of solo artists before launching CADENZA.”

“Which is about where we are now, right? CADENZA hasn’t been around very long.”

Minami nodded. “Yes. I found _you_ through your work on _Tempora_ this past year. The director is a friend.” Her smile softened. “To show my hand completely: I also have connections all over the industry and knew about your work for Shining, and also your work for bands at other agencies. Which meant you weren’t exclusive.”

Something about that phrasing made Haruka pause. She stiffened in her seat, and a change in the look on Minami’s face told Haruka she’d noticed. She continued.

“I thought your eye could be invaluable toward CADENZA. Not only do you have classical training, you also have idol experience. And the vision I have for CADENZA is softer, more feminine. Which is not my personal strong suit.” 

She looked at Haruka. There was a kind of plea in the look. “I’ve been hoping for your input on their image, and also their sound. But, of course, only if that’s okay with you.”

For a long moment, Haruka sat very still. Slowly, she sat back in her chair, the finger that had been tracing the leaf of the arrowhead plant falling to the table. There wasn’t anything explicitly _new_ in what Minami had just told her—it was just that she’d never heard it said _out loud_ before. 

Minami was doing something that no other agency or band had ever done for her. 

She was giving her a choice.

Haruka raised a hand to her lip.

“Oh. Wow. I don’t know what to say.”

Minami’s look softened.

“You don’t have to be sure. I know this is a lot, especially when you’re already committed to another agency.”

“Minami-chan—”

Minami held up a finger. “Let me finish,” she said, a gentle order. Haruka closed her mouth. “If I know anything about you—and I’m pretty perceptive—I know that you care about STARISH as much as I care about Divine.”

There was nothing Haruka could say to that. It was exactly what she’d been about to say. She couldn’t leave them anymore than Minami could leave Divine, especially not with what she’d learned in the last few minutes.

“I don’t know the full extent of your story with them. I’d love to hear it sometime. Something I can promise, though: CADENZA’s direction has yet to be shaped. I’d love for you to have a part in that, as big or small a part as you want to play.”

Haruka touched her lip again. Something heavy settled in her chest. She even felt a very early sprout of tears, though they didn’t get very far.

She nodded. Minami smiled.

“Fantastic.” She sat forward, then, rooting through the stack of papers on her desk. “They adore you, you know. They’ve been asking about you since the first class.”

“I wish I’d known I was eavesdropping on an idol training,” Haruka said through a laugh. “I’d have dressed more fashionably.”

“Nonsense. You were perfect.”

Finding what she was looking for, Minami handed a few papers to Haruka in a stack.

“Concepts from the first few songs their team has been noodling around. Nothing too concrete yet. If you’d be up for it, I’d love it if you could come to some of their stage practices soon.”

“I’d like that.”

Haruka’s body was in the room. Her awareness had detached, at least partially, her head spinning. There was a soft yellow glow around everything.

“Enough mind-altering revelations for one day, yeah?” Minami asked knowingly, reading her mind. “Let’s get out of here. It’s been a long day.”

And it had. More than she knew.

“Okay,” she said.

× × × × ×

Haruka sat in front of her open computer. The drive was in, its folders open in front of her. 

She took a deep breath and clicked on the first one. The one she’d seen part of already.

_“Today, March 3rd, is Kana’s birthday. She has asked for something very special. And who are we to deny our beautiful lily anything?”_

Haruka fast-forwarded through the first roughly thirty seconds, to just before Ikumi walked into the bedroom holding the camera. She paused, then hit play again.

This time, she watched.

The camera stilled, Shizuka’s sharp features trained on Kanako with a hard look. Minami had deftly zoomed in the angle before she’d walked in the room. Shizuka was sitting fully back in the chair, her back perfectly straight. One manicured hand was curled over the end of one of the arms.

She smirked at Kanako. This time, Haruka registered a tiny nod as Kanako let the robe fall to the floor.

Kanako was stunningly beautiful. Like Shizuka and Ikumi, she was several inches taller than Haruka, her long black hair stick-straight and highlighted throughout with gold. Her hair was pulled over one shoulder, giving the camera, and Haruka, a view of her muscular back and legs, both lean and strong like a dancer’s.

“Jaeyung was right. You are something. Come, let me see you.”

Shizuka’s voice was low. Almost like a man’s. At that pitch, it was gravelly. Kanako obeyed.

Shizuka spread her legs enough for Kanako to walk between them. She curled her hands around Kanako’s back at hip level.

“What beauty…”

Shizuka was speaking with an accent, Haruka realized. A Korean accent. 

_What is this—?_

Kanako’s back was still mostly to the camera. She could tell by the angle, though, that Ikumi had crept into the room, keeping the camera precisely level. Even from the partial angle it captured, Haruka could see Shizuka draw Kanako’s hips toward her as she leaned forward and pressed a kiss to where the top of her pubic hairline would have been, if she’d had any. Like her, Kanako waxed. 

Under her desk, Haruka crossed her legs. She felt herself blush.

 _“Seojun,”_ Kanako said, breathless. “I want to taste you. Please.”

Shizuka smirked against Kanako’s skin.

“Me first.”

In a deft move, Shizuka braced one arm across Kanako’s back and pressed a hand into her rear, tipping her forward as she shouldered her further open, licking a long stripe up Kanako’s labia. Haruka shuddered. Just as quickly, though, it passed as she realized how much strength it must take to hold Kanako that way.

She didn’t have to for long. Kanako curled a hand around Shizuka’s shoulder, one foot moving back to support her as she bucked into Shizuka’s mouth. But it was still a difficult angle, and after half a minute or so, Shizuka released her and pushed down on one shoulder. 

“Kneel,” she ordered. Kanako obeyed.

For a few moments, Shizuka, now sitting near the edge of the chair, brushed Kanako’s hair back from her face, pulling it over her shoulder. It spilled down her back.

“Wouldn’t want to get this dirty,” Shizuka said, smiling, but with something firm under it. “You may proceed. Unless I tell you otherwise, don’t stop until I come deep down your throat.”

Kanako’s reply was a gasp. But she sank further down, lightly pushing on Shizuka’s knees. She saw her take one of her folds in her mouth.

Haruka gasped. Without meaning to, she’d touched herself outside her shorts, running a finger up and down the crease of her groin—she stopped when she realized what she was doing, feeling herself grow wet even though she’d never been attracted to women. For several minutes, Kanako pulled, prodded, and sucked at Shizuka’s core—Shizuka had even begun to press her head further in, making Kanako brace against the chair to steady herself.

Shizuka’s eyes had closed. Her mouth was also closed, but she could see her nostrils flare with sharp breaths.

“You two are making me want to join in,” she heard Ikumi say.

Kanako whipped back, staring wide-eyed at the camera. She wiped Shizuka’s wetness from her mouth. 

“Who said you could—”

Haruka saw Shizuka’s fingers flex from within Kanako’s hair. 

“Ah, darling—for posterity. I never want to forget such a lovely sight.”

Kanako stood, turning, panicked, toward the camera. 

“I can’t. I’m not eighteen until next week, if my mother finds out I’ll—”

Shizuka laughed, a low, rumbling sound.

“She won’t. I assure you.”

“How can you? She has connections all over the world—?”

“ _Darling,_ you’re so close,” Shizuka answered. “Finish me off and then we’ll both be on our way, hm?”

Kanako turned back, wide-eyed. She stepped back. 

“I _can’t,_ I’m sorry—”

Shizuka plunged her own fingers into her folds. From the way her head rocked back, she knew she’d found the spot that made her lose her mind.

It took only a minute or so. Shizuka’s hand stilled and Haruka saw her body clench around it, drawing out the waves of her own orgasm.

Haruka watched Ikumi’s camera watch Shizuka watch Kanako’s face as she realized what had just happened. Kanako strode to Ikumi, filling the frame of the shot—

“Please, turn it off and delete it. I beg you. If my mother finds out, my career is over—”

She heard Ikumi’s bell-like laugh behind the camera. 

“Don’t worry, _darling._ No one will see it. If it would make you feel better, we’ll sign an NDA.”

The scene cut. It was black for a few seconds. Haruka’s breath came hard.

Then the video cut back on, the three of them now in frame together in the chair Shizuka had been sitting in in the bedroom. It was Shizuka who was speaking, now in her normal voice.

“To anyone who might be watching this other than the three of us, we want to make one thing clear. This is a re-creation of a scene that happened years ago. No innocence of minors was harmed in the creation of this video.”

“Though the innocence of a just-barely-still minor _was_ harmed in the creation of the original,” Kanako laughed. She was sitting half across Ikumi’s lap, half across Shizuka’s. “Isn’t it lucky that Reiji had it destroyed. My whole career would have been ruined if it had gotten out!”

“Not to mention your poor mother’s broken heart,” Ikumi teased, tapping Kanako’s nose. “And perhaps the hearts of a few million Korean girls, when they found out how _corrupt_ their little idol boys were.”

Kanako laughed. 

“Good thing it’s destroyed, then,” Shizuka answered. “Happy birthday, Lily.”

“We love you,” Ikumi answered.

The video cut. Haruka blinked at her computer. Reiji’s name barely registered.

She watched another one. It was nearly an hour long. The camera was mounted to one of the bedposts, the heavy, black curtains of the bed’s canopy drawn down. This time, Shizuka showed Kanako how to bind Ikumi in an elaborate shibari web designed to _open her sacral chakra_ —whatever that meant—and how to take Ikumi apart from within it.

When it was over, Haruka turned off her computer and found her bullet vibrator, making her way to her bed, where she stayed until she was practically asleep with the controller in her hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _If y'all think idols are really as squeaky clean as the industry likes to portray, y'all bout to have your hearts broken. Grandma Vena is here to tell you this shit happens._
> 
> _Epilogue to come in a sec, hold onto your hats._


	5. Epilogue: Dance, Dance

_Five months later_

Months passed. Commissions came and went. STARISH had gone out on tour again, as had HEAVENS—they were touring in America, something she learned Cecil had started to badger Ringo about arranging for STARISH too. Her Instagram feed was filled with pictures of the boys in various exotic locations. She interacted with them often. Otoya had taken to spamming her and Tomo with photos that were made to look like he was trespassing somewhere, becoming more and more ridiculous as the tour went on.

It warmed her heart to see that they were doing well. As well as they could, anyway. She still felt a cold tug in her gut whenever she thought of Tokiya, who had barely spoken to her in the nearly two years since their affair.

She missed them. A lot. Enough that she tried not to think about it too much or too long.

And in the meantime, she was home. 

Award show season came and went, with _Tempora_ winning several at many different shows. At Divine, Minami won the office bet of how many it would rack up at the show previous, winning the right to escort Haruka to the last one of the season—so it was she whom Haruka pulled into a hug before she walked onstage to accept the biggest award of her career, breezing up the aisle in glimmering gold that matched the statuette she was given when she got there. When the show had ended, she’d pulled her phone out to find it _erupting_ with notifications, dozens of missed calls and voicemails and tags on social media. Especially on the photo she’d snapped with CADENZA crowding around her, which was posted on their band’s feed. 

It was overwhelming, but it was fleeting. Haruka fell back into a routine as the mayhem settled. With QUARTET NIGHT on a temporary hiatus, both STARISH and HEAVENS touring overseas, and no pressing commitments at Shining, she spent more and more time with Divine—enough that by the time the boys returned, CADENZA’s debut album was entirely recorded and mixed. With their debut so close, Haruka became a fixture at their practices.

“We want to make sure we’re doing your music service,” Ayumi insisted. While Haruka didn’t completely buy it, she was happy to go anyway, all the more since they practiced in the same studio where Minami held her Argentine tango classes. 

_Those,_ she never missed. Ikumi, Shizuka, and Kanako loved to tease her about it.

“Tango is so _sexual,_ ” Ikumi purred the day they’d learned about her hobby. Following several weeks of Haruka dancing around it or changing the subject, Kanako had gotten Haruka to confess where she spent what had become her Monday _and_ Wednesday evenings by _tricking_ her, asking her to meet after one of CADENZA’s practices to work on her upcoming solo song. 

“Our little Lovely is growing up!” Kanako chirped.

“We’re the same age,” Haruka said through a laugh.

“Under the sun, perhaps,” Shizuka answered. “How many times do you think you’ve been reincarnated?”

But as the end of QUARTET NIGHT’s planned hiatus began to creep closer, as she was still mixing CADENZA’s debut album, she was surprised when Reiji reached out to her with an idea that was so perfect, she wondered if it had been planned.

When she’d finished it, she’d gone to the resort house the four of them kept at the beach. Close enough to the city that she could get home in under an hour, but far enough away that it felt like an escape. The text Reiji had sent earlier instructed her to just come in when she arrived, the door would be open—at the thought of what had happened the _last_ time she’d walked into an idol house that way, she was immediately suspicious.

The click of her shoes echoed in the hallway. She pushed open the first door she came to that was already partially open.

QUARTET NIGHT were posed like a picture around a desk at one side of the room. Reiji was in the chair, which was tipped toward the door as though awaiting something; Ranmaru was draped over the top of it, a look that may or may not have been as casual as it intimated. Camus rested against the wall adjacent, his hands in his pockets, one ankle crossed over the other. Ai was simply standing nearby. As an android, he didn’t actually have to relax.

Reiji nodded at her. “Let’s see it, kouhai-chan. I’m anxious to see what you’ve come up with.”

“You know what he’s been looking for?” Ranmaru asked with a glint in his eye. 

They were baiting her. For her part, Haruka ignored it.

“Yes,” she answered. “It goes well with my interests, actually.”

She realized as soon as she said it what she’d just divulged. Surprisingly, though, she felt not self-consciousness about it, but _defensiveness._ How strange.

The four of them had coalesced around Reiji’s absurdly throne-like chair and were reading through the folio of music she had delivered. Haruka stood several paces back, one arm across her middle, the other hanging at her side.

She knew she’d nailed what they’d asked of her. And somehow, she knew _Reiji_ knew that what they’d asked of her was well within her power and her interests.

A few days after the award show, Reiji had called her with an idea for a new song. 

“I want a tango,” he’d said. “Something that gets the blood boiling. Think you can do it, Kouhai-chan?”

She’d agreed. She hadn’t known what Reiji was playing at, but the concept was straightforward enough. It had taken her a couple of weeks and a few more classes’ worth of experience to get a feel for it, and with her schedule with Divine as busy as it was, it was a few months before it was presentable. The last class before she’d gone to meet QUARTET NIGHT, when Minami had used _her_ to demo the body positioning on a spin she’d learned a few weeks ago, she remembered what Minami had told the class: _imagine you’re dancing with the person you want most in the world. Don’t_ hide _from how that makes you feel—_ show _them._

Ranmaru whistled over the sheet music.

“Kouhai-chan.”

Haruka straightened.

“This is exquisite,” she heard _Camus,_ of all people, whisper under his breath.

“Would you be in the music video for this?”

Reiji, who had asked, swiveled the chair around so he was looking at her. Ranmaru had vacated his spot behind it and was now standing with his hip cocked to one side, his arms crossed over his chest, smirking.

“You clearly know what you’re doing,” he pressed on. “Almost like you and the dance are _well-entangled._ What do you say?”

She summoned her courage.

“No,” she said. “But I will run through the choreography with you, if you’d like. I’ve been taking lessons.”

“That much is apparent,” Ai answered. “This would be inconceivable without them, based on our requests.”

His processing was dead-on. Haruka nodded.

Reiji stood out of his chair. He walked over to her, holding a hand out.

“Then would you do me the honor of dancing with me?”

Haruka blushed. But she nodded. She took his hand.

× × × × ×

_In his mind, she walked into the room looking like sin. Her dress cut low, almost to her navel, and tied around her neck, leaving her back entirely bare. The flowing skirt ghosted across her left thigh. Over the right, a slit curled in an arc over her hipbone, held in place by a single strap. The leg was bare down to her shoe._

_The dress was red. Bright crimson, contrasting wildly with her hair. It did things to him. She met his eyes as she walked in, her steps barely audible. She’d been trained well._

_He was silent as he held out a hand, still silent as she offered hers. He swept her up._

_They danced like leaves in autumn. Their legs moved in and out of each other, never missing. His hand brushed along her back, down over her arm and hand as he spun her like a whip and she snapped back with both force and grace, her head momentarily flicking to one side. He signaled her with a squeeze in the slit over her hip and lifted her in a figure four hold, her back to him, toes pointed. She arced deeply back over the arm that held her, a hand braced gently against his hamstring._

_She was small, but she had a dancer’s body, all long limbs and the strength that comes from poise. When she stepped down out of the hold, there was barely a beat before she kicked a leg over his and twisted up and over it, facing him again._

_When they were done, he spread her legs and hiked her over his hips and_ shoved _her into the wall. She met his lips and bit. He ground hard against her._

_“Don’t be gentle,” she gasped against him._

_He was about to oblige her when silver shimmered at the edge of his closed eyes. He snapped them open, lifting his hand from the bulge in his pants his crossed legs couldn’t fully obscure._

_Ranmaru came into the room slowly. He didn’t acknowledge Reiji until he’d taken up his earlier post at a corner of the desk, leaning against it._

_“You too, hm.”_

_It should have been a question. It wasn’t. There was no need for it to have been, not when they’d all seen what happened when they ran the choreography._

_His daydream hadn’t been entirely a_ dream, _after all. No red dress, no attempting to fuck a hole through the wall into the bedroom next door. And instead of it just being_ him _on the floor with her, it had been seeing the man in front of him experimentally pick her up from a Kilian hold where she’d instinctively wrapped one leg behind them, holding her other straight along Ranmaru’s with a beautiful point to her toe, that Reiji had committed a cardinal sin: he’d_ changed the choreography.

_He closed his eyes again._

_“We’ve all been there. Or—most of us. You know.”_

_“I do.”_

_Ai was obviously unaffected. Shinomiya was gay, though not everyone knew it yet. Ringo, too. Ryuuya was too old._

_The rest of them?_

_Tokiya’s foray with her was the worst-kept secret in the agency. His control over his emotions was already abysmal, and it was far worse after they’d returned from the international leg of their first tour. Haruka had become far more guarded. No one had ever said anything, but it wasn’t hard to prod the juniors into revealing bits of the picture here and there._

_Running into her at Eiichi’s cemented it for him. She did work for HEAVENS, yes, but there was no reason she would have been there late at night if she hadn’t solicited his very particular_ help.

_“You’re the last one.”_

_“So it seems.” He_ hm _ed through an ironic smile. “Clever girl. I didn’t think she’d manage it.”_

_He felt rather than saw Ranmaru’s look._

_“She isn’t a girl anymore, you know.”_

_“She’s so very_ young, _Ran-ran. I wouldn’t_ dream _of corrupting her with my base desires.”_

_Reiji opened his eyes. The grin was still there. Ranmaru looked pointedly at his crotch, where he was still half-hard._

_“But you_ do _dream about it.”_

_Reiji laughed._

_“So I do! How about that.”_

_Ranmaru stood to go, acknowledging him with a small, knowing smirk. “Let me know if you want help with that. Otherwise I’ll let you get back to your sin.”_

_Hm, now_ there _was a thought. Ranmaru taking her from behind, himself in front, his bandmate’s impressive cock sliding against his through her walls as he practically split her open—_

_He felt a rush of heat south as Ranmaru let the door fall closed. He grabbed himself in a vicegrip, forcing it back._

_There was plenty of time for sin today. No need to rush._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _The first time I published Synesthesia, back in 2017, I got some interesting pushback on my OCs. Especially Ikumi. And that made me feel kind of funny. Specifically, it made me feel funny because in the three months it took me to write Synesthesia, Ikumi had established almost as loud and palpable a character-presence in my brain as have characters in the YA novel it took me eleven years to write, basically screaming to be given a fair chance—it seemed weird to me that people wouldn’t love her as much as I did. Minami took up a similar amount of space after a while, and same thing. What I quickly realized upon re-reading, though, was that Ikumi, Minami, and the girls barely have any stage time in Synesthesia. Of course it wasn’t self-evident how wonderful they were._
> 
> _So I spent nearly 17,000 words fixing that problem._
> 
> _If you read this far, please know that I appreciate you tremendously. If my skeptical reviewer is reading, I hope I’ve been able to change your mind about the ladies._
> 
> _Also, I have a_ problem. _This offshoot 'verse is expanding out of my control. Send help._


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